A Question Libertarians Can Answer Easily

By asking “If libertarianism is such a good idea, why aren’t there any libertarian countries?” Michael Lind has set up the all-too familiar trap of the intellectual straw man, and it seems that many libertarians have fallen for it.

His question makes as little sense when you replace “libertarianism” with, say, “atheism” or “environmentalism” or “feminism.” Operating in a liberal-democratic system that is driven by what Isaiah Berlin described as “value pluralism,” libertarian intellectuals and activists aim at affecting the world of ideas and the political process through the policy concepts they propose, not at establishing a Utopia based on their principles.

From that perspective, it’s difficult to argue that libertarian or classical-liberal ideas as they apply to economic policies—a.k.a. “free-market ideology”—haven’t had a dramatic impact in the last four decades or so.

Anyone reading this post will be familiar with the growing power of the free-market ideas of Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, James Buchanan, and the like, and their role in launching the shift towards the restructuring the welfare state under leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, a shift that in some cases (New Zealand, for example) was transformative in nature.

Lind is correct in reminding us that the welfare state remains alive and well in the United States, Britain, and other Western countries. Reaganism and Thatcherism didn’t take the form of revolutions that led to the creation of “libertarian countries.” And it’s possible that many of the reforms in the welfare state would have taken place in the form of pragmatic responses to economic stagnation and the process of globalization even without the direct infusion of libertarian ideology.

But the fact remains that for most of the 1980s and 1990s free-market ideas were in ascendancy and the political spectrum worldwide—including Democrats under Bill Clinton in the U.S. and Labour under Tony Blair in the UK, not to mention the leadership classes of post-Communist China, Russia, and India—moved in that direction.

That didn’t transform anyplace on earth into a libertarian Utopia, to be sure. In fact, Singapore, which Lind points to as an example of a libertarian state, is if anything the ultimate Nanny State, while the economic liberalization of Chile took place under a military dictatorship.

One of the main and obvious reasons why the libertarian movement in this country has failed to develop into an effective political force has been the existing two-party system. It’s not inconceivable that if the United States had a parliamentary system, a viable Libertarian Party could have played a role in shaping legislation and policy, not unlike that of the laissez-faire Free Democrats in Germany or the left-libertarian Liberal Democrats in Britain.

The good news for libertarians marginalized by the two-party system is that their thinkers and activists are not forced to implement their ideas by way of specific policies, a process that requires making formal coalitions, concessions to other political groups, and embracing a nuanced approach to issues ranging from free trade to drug legalization. Libertarians can remain ideologically pure—which is also the bad news since it allows Lind to ridicule them as dogmatic ideologues and Utopians.

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29 Responses to A Question Libertarians Can Answer Easily

There is a semi-serious way of taking Lind’s silliness which your response does not really come to terms with. I am speaking of the old paradox of weak government and strong state. Thatcher and Reagan, to state the obvious, were not libertarians but conservatives who married their belief in economic liberty with a powerful vision of the conservative state, articulated most prominently through defense spending, emphasis on law and order, and a moral vision of the social order sustained though family policy and other areas of domestic policy where a moral agenda could be pushed through using the resources of state power.

It has always been my thinking that these two sides of conservatism need each other and are in fact inseparable in practice. This is because the damaging social consequences of free market economics require considerable intervention and correction from an activist, authoritarian state that has to deal with the problems stemming from corrosive economic policies by, say, building ever more prisons, using a strong military to open up markets internationally, by force if necessary, and of course ever more futile attempts to shore up failing institutions like families and schools from the whirlwind of free markets.

The question I would like answered from libertarians is not Lind’s silly question, but rather whether they are aware that laissez-faire economics has always been accompanied in practice by an authoritarian state, and this relationship seems essential rather than contingent.

A problem for the libertarians(and I am not one) is that some of their economic ideas(if the philosophy could be sent back in time) helped create capitalism and industrialism. The combination of capitalism and industrialism not only created surplus wealth, it created large classes of disoriented people stuck in relative poverty. Think of the rural English peasant forced off the land and into the grimy industrial towns of Manchester, Birmingham, Barnsley and George Eliot’s fictional Lantern Yard. To alleviate their grievances, the proletariate used democracy to put a brake on complete economic liberty and socialized some of the surplus wealth. Very inexactly, you might say libertarianism+capitalism+industrialism+democracy created the welfare state and socialism.

Comparing libertarianism to feminism, environmentalism the way Hadar is mistaken because the latter don’t smack of a unified movement the way libertarianism does, with a shared understanding of philosophy, economics, i.e. the complete package that gives it the characteristics of a cult (as Lind has called it).

Feminism and environmentalism (to a somewhat lesser extent) or by and large reformist-minded, hoping to tweak laws here and there. They don’t talk of wholesale anarchism or something close to it in the minds of most Americans: the abolition of the welfare state.

I think it odd that Hadar would question Lind’s charge against libertarians on the “why no libertarian country?” angle while including a pic (not that Hadar necessarily chose it, I know how that owrks) of precisely such a plan of action. Whether it’s a free state project, seasteading, mulling the merits of medieval Iceland among others, libertarians have definitely invited the criticism that they’re some kind of utopian in search of a country to call their own.

Obviously representative government as we have does NOT work – witness TARP and OBAMACARE especially. We need a direct democratic, constitutional republic with an even stronger Bill of Rights to protect the property and privacy of the individual. WE THE PEOPLE are not being served by a representative govt. that only represents the interests of the elitists, the Wall Street Banksters and money-junkies and the lobbyists. Congress could just be reduced to a unicameral debating forum, with all bills that are introduced voted on directly/electronically by WE THE PEOPLE on a quarterly basis.

Leon, I had a problem with your second paragraph, where you imply that there are no countries based on atheism, feminism, or environmentalism. (Actually, there were some comments on this blog, I believe, saying that Sweden was very feminist, and Iceland may be the same, but let’s ignore that.) But how can you say that there are no atheist countries? There was in France between the fall of Louis XVI and the rise of Robespierre, and a much longer-lasting one in Russia starting in 1917 and lasting for over seventy years. After WWII, a number of countries joined the ranks, and a few still exist, even if all but North Korea have moderated their stance somewhat. Do you mean that, other than the short-lived French Revolutionary example, none has ever existed except for Marxist-Lenininist ones?

When I hear questions like this, I just can’t help but imagine some Portuguese nobleman in 1572 saying “If democracy is such a good idea, why aren’t there any democratic kingdoms? If it was such a good idea, wouldn’t at least one kingdom have tried it?”

As I somewhat noted in that other recent libertarian thread here you can hardly know whether to laugh or curl your lip at seeing a guy like Lind snark on libertarianism. Whether it’s Lind’s brand of liberalism in general or his own Stalinist-strong partisanship history in particular one has to strain to find any principles that same have ever been faithful towards, other than the principle of attaining and keeping power. Just as one sees today with liberals like Lind (and I have little doubt Lind himself) frantically engaged in just about the most devastating thing that could be done in betraying the last interest group that they so opportunistically professed to feel such a cosmic duty towards—the poor, especially African-Americans—by throwing their economic interests totally overboard via panting after the votes of their latest hoped-for interest group in the form of militating for an amnesty and essentially open borders for Hispanics, with all that same means for the low-skill job wages in this country.

It is thus simply impossible to perceive Lind’s sneering as nothing less than the sneer of the (so-far) successful unprincipled hack for the defeat of the (so-far) unsuccessful principled.

Secondly, as Christopher’s post somewhat alludes to, my take is that libertarianism really coalesced into a reasonably full-fledged, discrete and coherent political philosophy since 1950 or so, and thus to compare it with the haphazard, gradual, evolutionarily developed (and non-intellectually born) ideas of liberalism or conservatism is just simply comparing apples to oranges.

Moreover, there’s more than just a little smell of fear one can get from Lind’s piece. For what seems to be brewing for the greatest, latest effusion of his brand of liberalism in the form of Obamacare which, the closer we come to its realization, the more public dislike of it grows and the more certain train-wreck-like seems its fate. And then, putting even that to shame, what of the big big bankrupt financial picture that Lind’s liberalism has squarely put us into, with there seemingly being no way now to avoid a decades-long, orders-of-magnitude disabling and disfiguring of this country? With all the national diminution this is going to entail and all the social strife this is likewise going to entail, with all its likely class and race and ethnic strife that liberals such as Lind have faddishly toyed with.

Seems to me that like the good, hackish partisan that Lind is, he smelled the air and scented that the literally and figuratively impoverished and corrupt state he and his friends have given us has sparked a growing public interest in how to escape same and in what principled alternatives exist, with libertarianism perhaps garnering the most attention as is evidenced by the utter lack of regard for both the Democrats and the Republicans and the liberals and the conservatives, and the rise of people like Ron and Rand Paul and the tea-party people.

In other words maybe it’s just like Gandhi said: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, and then you win.”

Even for just not recognizing the possibility of this with libertarianism Lind shows he’s no academic or intellectual, but is instead nothing but a partisan hack, unconsciously already practicing at Step 2.5 on Gandhi’s step-ladder of hackery.

Every ideology has an ideological process that engenders some vision of the “good society”. If any ideology suffers from Utopian dysfunction, it is the current notion that Democracy is the best of the worst.

No country is all of anything. What make libertarianism unique is that it offers the possibility of the society without the initiation of aggression on the part of the state and an intolerance of fraud.

While a lot of libertarians wallow in ‘awfulizing’, the least starry eyed amongst us recognizes the moral illegitimacy of the current endeavor. Otherwise we are in fact hard knock realists make the best of a statist world.

It is not necessary for the US to switch to a Parliamentary system to empower third parties. What is needed is moving to Ranked Choice Voting and Proportional Representation, While these concepts are usually found in parliamentary governments, where the majority party or a coalition of major parties pick the county’s leader, it is possible to incorporate them in the congressional system with elected President used here. For more information please visit http://www.fairvote.org

Derek Leaberry says:
June 13, 2013 at 5:33 pm
A problem for the libertarians(and I am not one) is that some of their economic ideas(if the philosophy could be sent back in time) helped create capitalism and industrialism. The combination of capitalism and industrialism not only created surplus wealth, it created large classes of disoriented people stuck in relative poverty. Think of the rural English peasant forced off the land and into the grimy industrial towns of Manchester, Birmingham, Barnsley and George Eliot’s fictional Lantern Yard. To alleviate their grievances, the proletariate used democracy to put a brake on complete economic liberty and socialized some of the surplus wealth. Very inexactly, you might say libertarianism+capitalism+industrialism+democracy created the welfare state and socialism.

Do you have any sources of information that shows the standard of living of people actually declined due to industrialization? Do you have any sources of information that shows industrialization created poverty or was poverty inherited by industrialization? Poverty is the natural condition of mankind. Industrialization created goods and services that were attainable to more income classes, which raised the standard of living for people.

I just had this argument with a friend the other day, with him advocating the Lind position (likely simply to continue the discussion rather than out of any personal conviction for the hopelessness of Libertarianism).

In the course of the discussion, I suggested that we already have Libertarianism (basically) in this country in our first amendment, something most people basically endorse and understand: that there may be a plurality of viewpoints, many of them “wrong” or temporarily believed to be “wrong,” but we are all better served by allowing them to be aired rather than quashing them. This largely goes for religion as well (unless you are a Rastafarian).

Through our 1st amendment, we can see one pillar of libertarianism already enacted – with tremendous success for the marketplace of ideas, and indeed for the marketplace of religions (the marketplace for the press could still use some work, imo). In this area of life, and to a certain limited extent, we *already have* a Libertarian “utopia” in ideas and religious freedom.

For people who understand this but wish to deny economic liberty, we can bring in the Thatcher/Reagan/New Zealand (or Polish, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese et al) examples to complete the other leg of the Libertarian platform.

And to free traders, who already accept the value of laissez-faire and believe that we live in a largely (as x approaches libertarianism) libertarian utopia, hampered, as it were by excessive regulation and taxation.

In other words, as has long been known, both sides of the political spectrum are largely libertarian in their own domains. It is just a matter of breaking out of the polarity and realizing the principles of free markets are identical to the principles of free speech and freedom of association. They often produce negative results, but by allowing for even more liberty (rather than retrenched control) the bed get weeded out and we are on the whole much better for not intervening.

Anyways, perhaps it would be better to respond to Lind by asking him to look around and see that every sector in the country (unless there be monarchists somewhere) is libertarian to some degree. If we add them up, we can see that libertarianism actually does work, we’re just not able to make the leap out of our own tribal affiliation groups to actually see it.

I do not disagree that England’s aggregate wealth was increased by industrialization but that wealth was skewed almost entirely to the mill owners and managers. The mill workers labored long hours in great misery for little pay and lived in hastily built hovels crammed into densely populated slums. Their lives did not improve by being kicked off the farm and into the industrial slum. It was not by accident that once the vote was achieved by all the men of Britain, rich and poor, that a man like Keir Hardie would form the Labour Party which would win 2 parliamentary seats in 1900, 142 seats by 1923 and elect a prime minster, and 393 seats in 1945 and initiate a full-throated socialism onto Britain. Those working class men in early industrial England must not have been very happy at the wealth industrialization provided them.

Speaking of the first amendment, I feel like comparing atheism to libertarianism is comparing apples to oranges, because atheism is not an encompassing idea of how a state should operate.

You could argue that, based on the first amendment’s establishment clause, we in America do live in an atheist country (Or, more properly, an agnostic one) This means something very different for us than it did for the Soviets.

Or, you could well argue that, with the presence of God on our money and invocation of Christianity in public life, that we are a Christian nation, which again, is very different here than it was in 16th century Spain.

To a certain extent the same is true of feminism and environmentalism, neither of which are encompassing ideas about what kind of power a government should have.

I’m kind of disturbed by the fact that it takes so much time to respond to the question “If this is a good idea why isn’t everybody already doing it?” which is not exactly a straw-man, but is clearly a logical fallacy. “Hey Wright brothers, if heavier than air flight was possible, wouldn’t it have been invented already?” or “Hey JFK, if people can go to the moon, why aren’t there already tons of people up there, huh?”

The question does not suddenly become more sensible just because you are talking about an unpopular political belief (“Hey suffragists, if women voting was a good idea, wouldn’t at least one country have tried it already?”).

Derek
You come in good faith but what you’re talking about is incredibly historically ignorant. Before the industrial revolution everybody except the elite was poor. This had been the standard condition for all of humanity since forever. The standard of living from the time of Jesus until 1750-1800 was more or less the same. This is why the monarchs protested capitalism because it meant that those who could produce could move up. Before that you didn’t move.

Anyway the best summarized case for liberty I have seen is this speech by Tom Woods. It is the first 30 mins. If you’ve not changed your position slightly then fair enough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaKg2I_2-9E

Who do you suppose was “forcing” people to become factory workers instead of farmers? People became factory workers because they could earn a better living being a factory worker than being a farmer. In fact, net/net, since more people becoming factory workers implies that fewer people would be farmers, the incomes of farmers would have been expected to (and in fact did) rise as well.

Of course “there are rich people and you can take their stuff” is always going to be more intuitive and less abstract than “efficient markets with strong property rights maximize welfare and minimize deadweight loss,” especially among the less-educated. I’m certain that if we put whether or not 0.999… = 1 up for a vote ~90% of the public would say it isn’t, since that is by far the more intuitive and less abstract answer, but that doesn’t make it any less wrong.

The fact is that in Britain as in America and other societies economic growth and especially income growth for the lower and middle classes was far more rapid during the relatively laissez-faire period than during the subsequent development of the high-tax-burden, high-regulatory-burden, welfare state.

Lind has a valid point. It’s not so much that no libertarian state exists now or has ever existed. It’s more whether a country with universal suffrage and a numerically substantial, settled, “pre-existing” population would ever adopt libertarian policies.

There could be and are desert islands or ocean platforms that declare themselves to be libertarian states. One could imagine a territory under some single or group proprietorship only admitting settlers who subscribe to a libertarian code.

Whether any actually existing country with diverse social classes could give the vote to all adults and expect to subscribe to such a libertarian creed once frontier lands had already been apportioned and settled is another story. Democracy and the absence of “free” land and elbow room may not allow for the fulfillment of libertarian ideas beyond a certain point.

Also, it looks like much of the argument is about which of two different ideas of libertarianism one accepts. Is libertarianism a utopian blueprint for a new kind of society. Or is it an ideal, like feminism, environmentalism, Christianity, or socialism, that influences existing states to change their policies in hope of gradually approaching, a “Fabian” ideal that one approaches without ever attaining.

In other words, do you answer Lind’s question, or do you reject it as being based on false premises? Lind may have the upper hand here, because many libertarians reject governments or parties that move in the direction of libertarian in favor of theoretical states that entirely fulfill the libertarian ideal. In other words, he’s following some of the best known and most egregious schools of libertarianism to the letter, rather than some Fabian libertarianism that many libertarians would disdain.

About 19th century Britain: it’s not simply a matter of wealth, but rather of the state of mind and sense of well being that rural workers might have as opposed to urban workers. Arguably there was sense of freedom or harmony in the country that wasn’t felt in the cities, whatever one’s income level. It’s certainly true, though, that the city promised freedom from rural overlords, but it’s also possible that the misery of urban life in 19th century cities outweighed the satisfactions of liberation from surviving feudal constraints.

“The good news for libertarians marginalized by the two-party system is that their thinkers and activists are not forced to implement their ideas by way of specific policies, a process that requires making formal coalitions, concessions to other political groups, and embracing a nuanced approach to issues ranging from free trade to drug legalization. Libertarians can remain ideologically pure—which is also the bad news since it allows Lind to ridicule them as dogmatic ideologues and Utopians.”

Hello! You just made Lind’s point.

This is to say that *libertarianism* can and should remain in Cloud Cuckoo Land, where it need not be anything but a petty dream of Social Darwinists.

Founds like political Fundamentalism — they aren’t concerned with any ideas, or facts, which contradict The Gospel According To US. (But, boy, do we get to condemn the “sinners” who insist on living in the real world.

[ In fact, Singapore, which Lind points to as an example of a libertarian state, is if anything the ultimate Nanny State, while the economic liberalization of Chile took place under a military dictatorship. ]

Well, yes. One big hole in the libertarian ideal is the fact that the vast majority of people don’t WANT to live in a libertarian society, so one can only be instituted through the use of force.

In the 40 years since we have adopted some libertarian policies, we have had stagnation on most family’s incomes, bubbles of increasing ferocity, and a meltdown that has left us with a barely sustainable fragile system.

The healthiest countries are those in Northern Europe which are the least libertarian.

The reason there has never been a libertarian country is because of a certain aspect of human nature. Large organizations, any large organization, whether it be a government, company, charity, or company, once they reach a certain size, become led by a certain type of personality type. Take a company for example. There are plenty of large companies that start out as a small business, led by its founder, who in almost every case, understands the dominant technology of the business and is considered an expert in the dominant technology of the business. They tend to be technocrats. At some point though, if a company grows, and especially if its taken public, the technocrat moves on. The reason is that the top job is no longer focused on the work, but on dealing with public image (beyond product reputation), and with Wall St analysts, government, etc. In a word – “politics”. Enter the BS artists – those with the gift of gab and charisma, which is synonymous with politician. They gravitate to positions in charge of large organization. For companies, its usually all down hill from there. In fact, companies sometimes bring the original founder back to fix things, because he or she knows the actual work of the company.

Same with a country. In ancient times when tribes started to organize, it may be the best hunters and gatherers that lead, encouraging others to follow their examples and instruction, but once a tribe or country gets to some point and they become “powerful”, the political types float to the top, somewhat like s _ _ t. Politicians just naturally want to then dominate and control, in other words rule, those that they lead.

So its an aspect of human nature, specifically, a particular personality that spends all of their energy to rise to the top of large organizations, no matter how incompetent they are in everyday matters. That’s why there have never been any libertarian countries. Does that mean there never will be? I don’t think so. Progress will continue, and be unstoppable. There will be a way. My opinion is libertarian types, in some breakaway portion of a country, will construct a constitution that will be almost impossible for the political types to change or dilute. Either that, or a country will become so ungovernable by the political types, that libertarians will take over and construct a difficult to break constitution.